Dripping Ledger
by R.A.Rodgers
Summary: She has no idea who she is anymore. Does she thank him, or does she hate him for this? - Clint/Natasha, Pre-avengers, with some references to comics-only info. YES There WILL be Budapest involved. Romance/Humor and slightly dramatic... ok very dramatic.
1. Undone

_**Dripping** **Ledger** -__ Where I write something that _was_ a one-shot... Until I went to the movies and watched Avengers for the... Oh, I lost the count._

* * *

Red streams away with the flow of water; what was once bright and thick, now pale, flowing thin till it disappears down the drain. The same red colors her ghost-white skin, her already aglow hair and poisons her mouth with the taste of metal. It lingers sweetly, fulfilling her need for that vice; the need that go as far in her life as her memory allows her to remember. One that came from the habit, from seeing to much of it. She presses her lips tightly, trying to keep the relish away. When she can still feel it, she lets the warm water from the shower fall in her mouth. The wide gash in her mouth burns, and he enters the bathroom just when she's spiting the liquid on the floor.

It's not the pain or the blood that bothers her, but the fact that she can no longer like them.

"How the hell did you got this?" He points to her mouth, indicating her bloody lips.

"It's not of your goddamned business." She wipes the red out, helped by the water, but it comes again, stronger. It's not only her lips. Her hands, her legs, her chest, her back. The cuts cover her body, some deep and terrible, some shallow, almost closing themselves. All of them covered in ruby. All of her covered in it. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He draws a sigh, and, undoing his tie, opens the glass doors that separate them. She curls herself a little more on the corner of the floor, subconsciously rejecting his approximation.

"I'm pretty sure you know what I'm doing here."

"Barton, I don't nee-"

"Yes. Yes you do." He reaches out for her hand, and is ignored. "Or did you already forgot who just saved your life?"

Those exact words were the last she wanted to hear. Anger builds in her faster than gasoline catching on fire.

"You did _not_ save my life, you're hearing me? I could've done it without you." She says, calmly, deadly, slowly directing her gaze at him. Her eyes are cold, determined. But he doesn't back down. His hand is still there. Waiting for her to just take it. Her throat, already bruised from the torture burns even more. "I've done it without anyone for a long time!" She finally yells, losing control.

He just rolls his eye, almost bored.

She opens her mouth to say something, but she can't. There is no such a thing as a set of words to make him go away. Maybe if she just shut up... But he knells by her side and puts his arms around her, lifting her in his arms. An exclamation leaves her mouth, but not a complaint. She's too surprised to even look at his face, so she just accept the gesture in the coldest way she can.

She just ignores it.

"C'mom, you won't be able to stop the bleeding underwater." He says. "Let's take care of it, shall we?"

* * *

His hands are softer than she thought. In her head, handling the arrows should made them rougher, colder, instead. It is not like silk, of course, but pleasant, still. The Hawkeye hands are warm and soft. While his fingers brushes her skin lightly, with the careful making of her bandages, she thinks that she don't know a thing about that men.

"You really got yourself like crap, huh, Romanoff?"

"I've been worse." She tells him a truth. "And you can call me Natasha."

"Well, _Natasha_, you can't go on like this anymore, girl."

She drops her head, genuinely confused by the phrase, when he gestures her to do it. _Like this what?_ His hands continue to move above her, now placing something over an ugly scratch in her neck. He has a weird sense of precision, an accuracy that's strange for her. Most man that laid a hand in her were reckless, unable to cause that sensation she was feeling now, one of longing, of firm delicacy. Being honest with herself for one time in her life, she muses that the reasons why men had hands in her were rarely a motive for delicacy. In an other line of thought, she can't help but smile, with a light laugh: spending a night with him must be at least interesting.

"What?" He's curious by her sudden amusement. Both of his hands rest around her neck, thumbs in her hairline, the other four fingers in the side, feeling the pulse in her veins. The two of them know that he could easily kill her. The two of them have a life where this is the first thought that crosses their minds. But she doesn't flinch. He doesn't move away. They've come to an agreement.

Assassins that came to the one thing impossible in their lives.

Trust.

"Why are you doing this?" She says, looking at the mirror again. The image is nothing but uncommon.

"Killers gotta stay together, right?" He jokes.

She has no idea why this is a time for joking.

"Why didn't you kill me? Why don't you do it right now?"

She has no idea what is going on with her life right now, or for the past three weeks.

"For the same reason _you_ didn't kill me."

She has no idea who she is anymore.

"Oh, using me as a trade leverage won't work. The russians are not that protective to their people as the americans."

Still, she cracks a joke. A terrible one. And both of them laugh.

He uses her distraction to caress the bandages one more time, making sure everything is staying there for a while.

"We're going back to the US later tonight, you should get some sleep."

She nods, in agreement. She has no idea what will happen next week.

He steps away, heading to the door.

"Barton..."

He stops and looks at her. Her eyes meet his.

_Thank you._ She answers, silently. _For everything._

"I owe you one."

"Yes you do." He replies with an amused look in his face. "Now get the hell out of the bathroom, I need to change."


	2. Red Memoir

She's tired, and that's an undeniable fact. The old wood of the cheap hotel's bed rattles when she drops herself in it, complaining about her light stature. Her back and her left side are too much damaged for her to be on top of it, so she puts her weight in her right side. White skin, sheets and shirt mix in together, and create a heavy contrast with the hair that falls around her in the pillow. She closes her eyes, but for as weary as she is, she knows she won't be able to sleep through the five hours they have before the plane arrives - the everlasting adrenaline in her veins would never let her. He probably would be able to, but there's an unsaid rule that declares that the only bed in the room is hers to have. Not that he cares.

Even before the bed rattles again, she has one finger in the trigger of the _Glock_ she keeps under the pillow, ready to put a bullet in a brain; eyes still shut, still controlled breathing. It's only a reflex. Amazingly, Barton's words are faster than her worn out muscles. The gun is yet unseen when he says: "You made me call you by your first name, yet you still thinks I'm gonna kill you. You know, I can't get a read of you, sometimes, Natasha."

Their rule is ashes. Honestly, she didn't think it would last that long. She just blows a sigh when he lays by her side. If she had any hope she'd be able to doss a little, now it's all gone. Knowing she can drop her guard around him isn't the same as feeling it. Her training speaks louder. Having him in yards away was uncomfortable; having him _inches_ away was disturbing.

Again, she choses to ignore him.

Natasha focuses on her broken skin, mapping and counting the spots of pain carefully, trying not to lose any of them. They seem a little less terrible after the bandages, somewhat smaller and concerning; she can feel her body working on healing them. Just lying down in a soft place tricks her metabolism into thinking she is actually resting, which fastens the process. Her rushed mind pays the price for it. The cuts are already hot, pestering her conscience and making her remember. All of that would leave scars, and not only in her body.

She feels the cold metal again, brushing her hips, going up by the side of her figure. She sees the grin in his face, feels it when his lips touch her neck. The scalpel's sharp point penetrates her derm. She listen to her own shaky voice trying to talk her way out of it, but the only response is a wicked light laugh. And more force in the blade. The pain doesn't matters. The blood tinting her in scarlet is just more of what she was so used to. Still, she feels herself shaking in fear when he keeps cutting her. Natasha Romanoff gets a glimpse of true fear, for the first time in her life, right before one of Hawkeye's arrows get stuck in her captive's head.

She's years and years younger, then, tied to a bed in a filthy dark room. A week before, she had her hands in the throat of a child born ten years after her. Natasha's nails had been inside the girls flesh for pure pleasure. Because of it, the floor is colored in fire-apple liquid, as well as the wall - and even the ceiling she spent so long looking at has blobs of claret -, it gleams at the low light when someone opens a door. A boot squishes in the sticky floor. Crimson-colored hands take her restraints off. _Have you learned that you can't kill your colleagues without orders already, Romanova*_? She's asked. It's a rare memory, something she thought to be buried in the depths of her sub-conscience.

The thin curtain of images disperses when she senses an approach. Her only solace - the thinking that he knows better than to touch her - is replaced by a shudder when his fingers reach her left arm. This time he's not fast enough. She rolls over her own body, using her left knee as a base, and throws her other leg around his hips, finishing the movement sat over his belly; with the pistol she already had in hands pointed to his forehead.

"I was just adjusting a loose end." Barton says, calmly. He doesn't even flinch. Her assassin's poise doesn't impress him: he has it too.

Her eyes follow his hands when he presses the bands that cover her wounded flesh. There's actually a loose end, one that he makes sure that will not tear the whole thing apart. Still, if that was the only reason why he was touching her, he'd just take his hand off her. That doesn't happen.

She gulps at his tenderness. And he succumbs to hers. The only finger in contact with her skin runs along her forearm, down to her wrist, up again to her shoulder. It's takes her a moment to realize, to put in words what he is doing. He's caressing her, sweetly, lightly, slowly, and repeatedly. She can't say no to that feeling. Natasha eventually closes her eyes. Without taking notice of it, she lowers the weapon down in his chest.

"You ok?" He asks.

The answer is an "Uh-hum" and a nod. She's tired, that's an undeniable fact. Barton puts the gun aside, his hand get a firmer grip in her.

"Come here", he whispers, and his other hand is in her waist. He pulls her toward him and she falls on top of him smoothly, accepting the gesture. She doesn't even fight it. Her breathing instantly changes, now it being steadier and deeper. The thinking can be dealt with later; all she wants is to drift into the dreamless sleep she craves for so much.

He knows that her back is a bloody mess, so he doesn't even try it. The spot between her neck and her shoulder is untouched, still, and that's the place she'll forever like him to caress. The place which she'll smile whenever she feels his lips there.

"_Pozhaluĭsta, ne otpustil menya_." She babbles, already half-asleep, as if Russian wasn't hard enough to understand when she was speaking it clearly. Barton has no idea what that means. He takes it as a casual insult for making her give up her roughness and just smiles in the dark.

* * *

* The female form for Romanoff, as used by Russians.


	3. White Hereafter

_shame, shame, go away_

_come again some other day_

_memories keep hunting me_

_help me chase them all away_

_hush, hush, settle down_

_button up, don't make a sound_

_close your eyes, turn around,_

_help me burn this to the ground_

_come now, take the blame_

_it's ok, i'll play the game_

_I don't care it's all the same_

_watch you all go up in flames_

_use me up, spit me out_

_let me be your hand-me-down_

_fame, fame, go away_

_come again some other day_

**_- Arlandria, Foo Fighters_**

* * *

She opens her eyes three hours and a half later, covered in sweat, but calmly. All of what she saw in those few moments of sleep are a routine since she first stepped foot in the SHIELD headquarters almost a month ago. The nightmares are a bitter and constant reminder that she will never belong there. A way to keep her in contact with who she is. A russian spy, a cold blooded assassin; not an american hero.

She notices that Clint is not under her anymore, and lets out a frustrated sigh. In normal days, the smallest hint of him trying to get out of the bed would wake her instantly, but she slept through it all. She'd been tired, she'd been worn out and she'd been _weak_.

Natasha sits up in the mattress and runs a hand between her soaked strands of hair. There has to be some other explanation. There's no way that she'd lost his movements, not ones that were so brusque. He'd probably slipped something in her drink before she went to bed.

She needs to question him about that, asap, and beat the crap out of him in case it's true. It probably is; the damn Hawk is always experimenting on new ways to annoy her and piss her off. The moments leading to her falling asleep are a perfect example - she has yet to question _herself_ about that later. Now, she just needs a shower to get rid of that feeling of failure.  
Certainly the water would wash away all of the wrong she's been doing, along with all of the unsureness she's been having and the myriad of small mistakes, tiny stupid mistakes that could get her killed at any moment.  
She closes her eyes and holds her breath, cursing herself. The Hawkeye. She had to wait for him, he was right. For that one moment, strapped in that chair, Natasha has needed him to save her life. She has been stupid, lately. Immature.

What the hell was happening to her?

* * *

_She walks in the white corridors. They strange for her. All she'd ever known were the dark-blood painted ones in the Red Room, so she wouldn't expect herself to be able to sleep between walls so white. White sheets. White pillows. White everything. It is annoying, not to say uncomfortable. So she gets out of the room and that's what she finds: white corridors. Everything in that damned place is white._

_Natasha hadn't noticed that when she first got there in the night before. Her arrive had been turbulent. There'd been quite a fuss when she appeared in the extraction point alive. Without handcuffs. And by free will. The highest patents were aware of her willingness to work with them, but the common agents were all praying for their lives. Her wicked smile, showing widely while she walked down the main hall to the Director's office wasn't really helping them to feel safe even there, in their own workplace. There'd been rumors, terrible ones. They said she could make a man weep his secrets out in less than ten minutes. Others said that she could do it in seconds. One of the experienced agents said he'd seen the Black Widow in action in a mission in Russia, and that those were the most terrifying moments in his life._

_It was said that she had a halo of death, and that she would only be stopped if she was killed._

_But she was alive._

_After meeting the famous Nick Fury and hearing The Hawkeye's sentence to almost two months of withdrawal, she had been put in that little room, next to his, and her smile melted into uneasiness. She was there, between white walls. Hopelessly searching for something familiar, like a child.  
The Widow finally finds solace in another small room, in the basement of the Helicarrier, after wandering around for almost three hours. The walls are grayish, and the floor is covered in a soft black mat. There are florets, sabers, rapiers, axes and even japanese katanas placed in the stand on the other side of the chamber, among other fighting equipments; but she takes a liking to the blades.  
She almost smiles at the dummy, standing there in the middle of the room, just waiting for her to punch it, or slice it. She could use the exercise, and the familiarity of it. She steps closer to the fencing swords, remembering how rusty is her sword fighting, but her eyes are immediately attracted to the one weapon that beat her._

_The Hawkeye's bow and arrows are resting by a hook in front of her, behind the blades._

_There is not a possible way to resist that. Natasha immediately takes the equipment in her own hands. It is light, but feels heavy, and it does't seems so easy to handle as he makes it seem._

_There is a never ending list of meanings for that moment, but she ignores them all. All the poetry doesn't matter. Everything that matters is to master this one instrument, whatever it takes. She wants to know it's strong points, it's weakness, it's tricks._

_She takes one shaft from the bag and places it in the bow, mimicking the Hawk's way of doing it. She'd seen it only once - and too quickly for her to really get the movement right - it took him only one arrow to make a mess of her._

_Natasha adjusts her posture a few times and takes the shot, missing the target wildly. Without a single sound, a single grumble, she takes another arrow, shoots again, misses again. And then repeats it all until her hands are sore from the friction with carbon fibre._

_She counts a hundred and thirty six shots before she finally lowers the weapon._

_"Who gave you the permission to play with _Biancci_?" Says a male voice behind her, making her take position with the bow firm in her hands and the arrow ready to make flight again. "Watch it, even being that terrible," he points out to the dummy, "at this range you could really hurt me."  
He has a mocking smile in his lips. A certain tone in his voice. It makes her blood boil. But she can't kill him, not after he saved her life._

_"The bow has a name?" Natasha asks, with a matching note of arrogance._

_"Yes. She has a name."_

_"She...?"_

_"Yes, she. And I'll ask again: who gave you permission to fuck around with her? She has only one man in her life - that's me. And, as far as I know, she doesn't like unexperienced women putting her hands on her."_

_The Widow actually smiles and the man's stupidity. What the hell of a comparison is that? Out of spite, she brings the arch up and slide a shaft through it, at the point of almost letting it go._

_"Well, I slept with woman before, she'll like me."_

_The concentration to, at least this time, make it right is so big she misses him moving around her. She only realizes that he's still in the room when she feels his chest in her back. She hesitates a reaction for a second and his figure fits perfectly upon hers._

_"If you really want to do it _with her_, at least do it right."_

_He makes his own body a mold for hers, and adjusts the hight in which her arms are positioned, the distance between her legs, the way her hips are, to make the perfect angle. He talks while he do it, trying to get some of the knowledge he has into her head:_

_"It's really just like having sex, dear. The foreplay starts from the top." He says, taking an arrow from the saddlebag in her back and putting it in her hands. "Then you go down", with his hands around hers, he helps her put the arrow in the bow while it's still pointing to the ground. "You use your mouth, it is a reference to what you need to do later." She feels the tip of his fingers touch her lips, along with the polyethylene strings. "Lower your elbows, please, honey, you're not going to be able to so anything right like this; bring your legs apart a little more, you need a solid base- I said apart, man must have a really hard time trying to get inside you, don't they? Straighten you spine, for christ's sake, or you'll have it in pieces when you're done. Keep your eyes on your target, you want to see what the hell is happening, after all, dear."_

_"You call me dear one more time and-"_

_"Do you talk like that while you're being fucked? Shut up, don't get distracted." He grunts. She ignores the comment and focuses on learning. "Now keep it steady. Yes, like this. Take your time, dear, enjoy this one moment of perfect balance." The Hawk slowly creates a distance between the two of them. His hands are not in contact with her anymore, they hover almost imperceptibly above her skin. Their bodies are not even an inch apart, but doesn't have her in his control anymore. "And when you're going to a climax..." It is only her fingers holding the string, now. "Do it gently." He whispers in her ear, and she releases the arrow._

_The metal tip hits the dummy's head. A perfect aim._

_She loses his quick smirk at the result because she's amazed herself. He moves away, leaving her with his bow, not without a twinge of regret. That girl is going to be a pain in his ass. She could cause a dominos fall they all won't be prepared to deal with._

_Little does he knows that, a week later, but in the exact same time, he's possibly going to be at the bridge, waiting for instructions for a departure. The mission's folder is going to be in his hands. And he's going to hate to look at it._

_"Who was the idiot that gave her this mark?", he's going to think. It's not _his _mission in his hands. It's hers. A kill, simple enough when you look at it this way. But this mark haves a name, a recognizable one. It is this one man's head, Dimitri Mihailov's, that has an absurd bounty. The one same head that the Widow's bullet missed eight days before, when _his _arrow gazed her skin for the first time._

_And he'll be thinking of that the plane arrives. He is going to depart to_ _Prague and find her trapped in a chair, with one of Dimitri's psychotic killers sliding a blade through her flesh. This man will face death, but Dimitri is going to stay alive._

_But all of that only happens with a decision. Now, looking to her shoot another perfect arrow in the doll's head, he has no idea what his next step - towards the door - is going to cause._

* * *

The killer draws the air trapped in her lungs and scans the room surrounding her. Barton is nowhere to be seen. The bathroom door is open, and he's not there, either. She's all alone again.

Again? Had he really been there, the night before? Hadn't she done the bandages by herself and gone asleep? That would explain why she couldn't hear him leaving the bed. Or why there was not a single of his belongings there.

"_Uzhe skhozhu s uma, Romanova?_" She talks to herself. _Going crazy, already?_

Barton or not, she still haves a main problem in her life. She's a murderer, so _being crazy_is not it. The problem is that she failed. And there's no such a word in her vocabulary.

Natasha jumps out of the mattress and checks the status of her main bruises - the cuts are all closed, no open wounds, no bleeding, her white shirt remained white. The white room remained white.

She's ready to walk toward the restroom and try to wash the blood out of her clothes when she catches something is the corner of her eyes. There's a manilla envelope by the nightstand, with SHIELD's seal closing it to confidentiality.

There are no names in it. And she's a SHIELD agent now, isn't she? Whatever. Screw confidentiality.

She rips the seal of and takes the paperwork out. Inside there is a name, yes, and it's a Russian name, but it's not hers. Her blood turns to ice.

Mihailov's last whereabouts is printed in black letters, as a simple and unimportant information about him.

Natasha puts the sheets back in the envelope, carefully thinking of the easiest route. Her blood starts warming up again, more than it should. There's no other decision to make. She's going after him. He's not even _that_ far away - maybe six hours by car. She's going to have to cross Slovakia, that could be troublesome, but she knows a guy that knows a guy she can trust.

It was a hit, yes, but it is personal, now. _No one_ has escaped the Black Widow before, and that was _not_ happening that soon. It is called a kill because it only ends when someone is dead.

And they were both alive.

She tosses the envelope in the nightstand and walks to the bathroom.

Natasha does't even know what to think when she spots Barton's bow - _Biancci_ - carelessly resting in a corner near the shower. That could explain the information about her mark - up to date and just waiting for her to wake up.

But it would imply that she missed his careless moves.

She decides that she prefer's craziness over another failure and takes the bow from the floor.

This time she's going to appreciate the morbid symbolism of having that weapon in her hands, because Dimitri was going to die by her arrow.


End file.
